Despite speculation that it might have the opportunity to develop a revenue model in which users pay directly for their use of its service, Twitter has made it clear in the past couple of years that it's going to make its money with advertising.

Only time will tell if that proves to be a wise move, but for those of us who wonder about what might have been, a similar service in Asia may provide an interesting case study.

Google still has its free analytics product, but now it has announced a paid-for version of Google Analytics, called Premium, which will be a $150,000 per year product.

In one brief announcement today from Google a very bold approach is being embarked upon. That is, going from a single free-to-all product, to one that is now split into two offerings: Google Analytics Standard (free) or Premium ($150,000 per year).

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp is frantically trying to monetize its digital properties. As part of that plan, popular video site Hulu recently added a premium version that costs $9.99 a month. For consumers looking for high quality video content online, it's an interesting model. But there's one catch.

According to new research from One Touch Intelligence, 88% of the content available on Hulu Plus is already available on Hulufor free.

In alll the talk about paid content online, the word freemium comes up a lot. In theory, freemium allows consumers to get a taste of a product for free and then eventually converts them into paid customers once they get hooked and demand more services. But it's not always so easy.

In the case of social networking platform Ning, the freemium model was putting them out of business. Starting in June, Ning went all in on premium. The result? More people are paying to use Ning. But whether that's sustainable is another story.

Video portal Hulu is quickly trying to make good on its promise to charge for content, but as of yet no one is talking about what a premium Hulu product will look like.

After rumors surfaced about a two tiered subscription model earlier this week, Disney EVP Kevin Mayer came out to say that “no decisions have been made” on Hulu Premium. That's too bad, because there are plenty of ways the Hulu could successfully charge for money. It's just not clear that News Corp. will go ahead with them.